


Centimetre

by MilkTeaMiku



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 09:25:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8573005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkTeaMiku/pseuds/MilkTeaMiku
Summary: If he gave in just a little, if he leaned into Victor a centimetre too far, then everyone would know about his feelings. 
 After a bad past relationship, Yuuri struggles to come to terms with the fact that he's fallen for Victor. Fortunately, Victor is there to show him how.





	

A lot of people assumed Yuuri had never been in a relationship. He couldn’t exactly blame them, considering how nervous he was and how soft-spoken he generally tended to be. He hadn’t really had a lot of relationships, either, only the one… If it could be called that.

The point was that he wasn’t completely unexperienced when it came to romance, not how people expected him to be. He just hadn’t had any good experiences, that was all. See, he’d had a… partner, before. He’d met someone during the time he lived in Detroit, though the relationship hadn’t lasted all that long. Yuuri had always known he wasn’t attracted to girls, but it wasn’t something he ever wanted to acknowledge in the eyes of the public, and liking a boy was acknowledging it quite a bit, wasn’t it? He hadn’t ever been confident enough to tell people about his past relationships, so he never had, not even when Victor started coaching him and the idea of his sexuality started resurfacing rather frequently.

His past boyfriend – because as much as Yuuri didn’t want to cement the fact that he was _different_ in his mind, that was what the relationship had been – hadn’t been very interested in being gay, either. It wasn’t something that was completely accepted by society, and the pressures of being absolutely perfect to make up for an inadequate sexuality were pressing. For all the interest Yuuri had in the boy, that pressure had made the relationship undeniably unhealthy.

For one, his boyfriend hadn’t wanted to associate with him in public. They never held hands or kissed where anyone had the chance of seeing them, and calling each other by familiar or pet names was completely out of the question. Yuuri had wanted to call him his boyfriend, if only just to himself, but that had been forbidden, too. The only time they were even remotely affectionate was in private, with the curtains drawn and the doors locked.

Looking back on it now, Yuuri realised it was an unhealthy relationship. It hadn't been good for him. He felt trapped by those affections, but he’d been too attached to leave the boy. It was pathetic, really. He’d never had a relationship, and he’d believed that if that one failed, then no one else would ever come to love him. He’d been afraid that he wouldn’t be able to trust anyone if he let his heart get broken, and that nothing would go right if he couldn’t get the relationship to work.

It hadn’t been good. He’d been like a caged bird, his wings constantly clipped to keep him close and pliant. He didn’t think that his boyfriend, or whatever he was, had meant to trap Yuuri like he had, but that’s what had happened. Yuuri’s self-worth had been at an all-time low, and he’d been frightened of just about everything, even his own shadow. When he thought about it now, it came as no surprise that the relationship hadn’t worked out, and Yuuri didn’t know who to blame for that, but a big part of him blamed himself.

He thought that maybe if he was different, or if he’d worked harder, then the relationship between them would have been better. That it would have worked. What if he was more attractive, more confident? What if he was more experienced, or a better skater? Would the boy he liked have liked him back just as much, then? They weren’t good thoughts, and they plagued him like a bad scent he just couldn’t wash away. Even now, years later, he hadn’t been able to move on. He’d accepted certain things about the relationship – that it was bad, that he wasn’t unlovable, that he deserved better – but there were some aspects of it that he just couldn’t escape, no matter how hard he tried.

Like the fact that he jumped when people touched him.

It wasn’t exactly something he could stop, though not for a lack of trying. When he was in that relationship, he’d gotten used to being left untouched unless they were in private. In some weird, twisted way, he thought that no one should ever touch him anymore, because he still feared being reprimanded for sharing that sort of intimacy with someone he wasn’t involved with. 

_How dare you let someone else touch you like that? I thought we were partners. Is what I give you not enough? Do you not want to be with me anymore?_

They were dizzying, poisonous thoughts. Realistically, he knew there was nothing wrong with physical affection. Shaking hands, linking arms, having his positions on the ice corrected or his back pressed down when he stretched… They weren’t even actions of affection, but he craved touch, and he hated knowing that if someone touched him, he’d lean into them. What if he crossed a boundary, or did something that unintentionally made a person uncomfortable?

He was so self-conscious of his actions that he could no longer see what any rational person would expect from him, and it was endlessly frustrating.

Even more so now that Victor was involved in his life. Yuuri couldn’t control himself around Victor, couldn’t keep his jerky reactions under control. He’d liked Victor for so long, had admired him for so long, and now he was no longer that unreachable idol Yuuri had had plastered all over his walls. He was… he was something different, something that Yuuri still couldn’t put a name to. Victor had transitioned into someone Yuuri knew intimately, someone who was real and tangible and within reach, someone who seemed interested in knowing him.

It was a very foreign concept.

Yuuri liked Victor. He liked Victor as more than an idol, as more than a coach, and as more than a friend. He wasn’t sure when his fawning feelings for Victor had turned from those of a fan to ones of a romantic interest, but they had. He thought it was maybe after his first Eros performance, when Victor had stood close behind him on the podium with his hand tight on Yuuri’s arm. He’d been so warm, and so supportive, like he’d wanted Yuuri to win all along. Yuuri didn’t like falling for people, not after his first relationship, because he fell _hard._

And it scared him. It scared him because he was already so attached to Victor, he was already starting to crave Victor’s sole attention. He wanted Victor to look at him and only him, he wanted to be the only one Victor liked. 

But every time he felt like he could have that, he remembered his last relationship, and he realised he couldn’t. Victor deserved someone better than him, deserved someone who could keep up with him, and match his overflowing beauty. He thought that most of the things Victor did for him – the touching, the affection, the _seduce me with all you have_ – were jokes, were trivial. To a person like Victor, those kind of things were mundane, were common. To him, they weren’t anything other than pretty words.

(That was why Yuuri had come out with _“No, no, no, no, no!”_ when Victor offered to be his boyfriend. Because it was a joke, wasn’t it? A teasing offer. A play to make him feel less down when he was drowning in his lacklustre skating. Yuuri had come to realise what those were, lately, and they seemed to be the only way Victor knew how to interact with him. There was no way he could mean any of it, right?)

He wasn’t sure what people expected from him now, just like before. So what if he could make seductive faces on the ice, if he could move his body in a way that people liked? It was a role, an imitation of Victor, wasn’t it? When the lights were dimmed and his hair was slicked back, he didn’t feel like himself. He felt like someone he wanted to be, like for those brief minutes the music was playing he’d left behind the pieces of himself he no longer wanted. If he could feel like that all the time…

The more he fell for Victor, the more he held himself back. He found himself up at all hours of the night trying to quell the uneasiness in him, trying to figure out why he was so desperate for affection, for Victor’s attention. Every time Victor touched him Yuuri felt it, hours later. He could feel Victor on his hands and his shoulders and his waist. He could feel Victor on his chin and his cheeks and his back. It was like Victor had consumed his thoughts, and no matter what Yuuri did, he couldn’t escape it.

His last relationship hadn’t been like this.

“Yuuri, let’s go eat dinner together,” Victor said, as he pressed his arm around Yuuri’s shoulder to pull him in.

Yuuri stiffened, and tried to hide it with a sigh. They were at the ice rink, as they usually were, and although there weren’t many people around, Yuuri instantly felt too exposed. If he gave in just a little, if he leaned into Victor a centimetre too far, then everyone would know about his feelings. There was nothing he wanted less than that.

“Victor, you know I need to practice,” he said, as he shifted away. “I want to continue.”

Victor whined, and lazily slumped across the rink wall. “Your stamina still astounds me,” he said. He sounded almost wistful. “I’m too old for this, you know.”

“You’re not old.”

It was the sort of easy conversation they always had. He’d been training with Victor for countless months now, and although he’d been nervous at first, he’d settled into the ebb and flow of Victor’s attitude. Sometimes he forgot about his worries and his insecurities, and deep down he knew he enjoyed any time he spent with Victor, but then he’d suddenly and uncontrollably freeze up or draw away, and everything would come rushing back in again.

But Victor was persistent. He was overtly affectionate and a very touchy-feely person. That, or he was blind to Yuuri’s awkward discomfort. 

“Yuuri, let’s go in the hot springs together!”

It was another offer Yuuri stiffened at, but did not reject. Victor was incredibly attractive, and seeing him without his clothes on always startled Yuuri. He thought he had become accustomed to it now, considering Victor liked to strip more often than a normal person would, but that instant, jerk reaction Yuuri always got never failed to make him hesitate.

The water in the hot springs was a comfort, at least. It always had been, considering how often Yuuri was in the baths. Victor seemed to like them quite a lot, too, considering how frequently he persuaded Yuuri to join him, just like that night.

“You know, Yuuri, there’s something I’ve been wondering about,” Victor said, as he drifted closer through the water. He wasn’t wearing his towel around his waist – which was not out of the norm, for him – so Yuuri couldn’t meet his eyes, but that didn’t stop Victor from sidling up to him. “You’ve been acting a little differently, lately.”

Yuuri’s heart fluttered. If it were possible for him to choke on it, he probably would have. “Is that so?” He mumbled, as he clenched his fingers together beneath the surface of the water.

Victor hummed, and leaned closer. He trailed his fingertips up Yuuri’s bare arm and across his collarbone. His touches were feather light, and they made Yuuri shiver. “You’ve been distant, lately. Every time I touch you, you-” he slid his hand under Yuuri’s chin, and tilted his head closer, “-flinch.”

And he did then, too. He couldn’t help it, no matter how comfortable he felt around Victor. 

“Do you dislike me, Yuuri?” Victor asked. There was a pout in his voice and a frown on his lips, two things Yuuri felt incredibly susceptible to. “Have I been too forward? Have I made you hate me?”

“No,” he said, voice startled. That wasn’t what was happening, it wasn’t Victor’s fault. He seemed upset by the mere notion of Yuuri disliking him, but it was the exact opposite. “Not at all.”

Victor hummed again. He observed Yuuri’s face very closely. “Is it something else, then? Sometimes you almost accept my affections, but then you abruptly move away…”

“Y-your affections?”

“Well, I do admire you quite a lot, Yuuri,” Victor said. He inched closer until their thighs were pressed together, and rubbed Yuuri’s cheek with his thumb. “It’s not only your Eros that seduced me.”

Something fierce and ugly in Yuuri was urging him to pull away, to restore his personal space, to escape. _He’s just teasing. He doesn’t mean it. He’s not telling the truth._ But Victor wasn’t a liar, he wasn’t, so Yuuri swallowed whatever was rearing its head, and curled his fingers in against his palms even tighter. “Victor, aren’t you a bit close?”

“Perhaps,” Victor said, but that didn’t stop him from pressing even closer, until his breath was a whisper across Yuuri’s steam-dampened skin. “Do you dislike it?”

He almost said yes. It was on the tip of his tongue; his mouth had formed the words, but when he spoke, nothing came out. Did he really dislike Victor’s closeness? The feeling of Victor’s hands on his skin? The way he felt like Victor was watching him and no one else in the entire world? No, he didn’t. He shook his head.

Victor hummed again. He looked like he was trying to decipher something particularly difficult – it was the look he wore when he was first watching Yuuri skate to Eros, before the “visualise katsudon” and “become the most beautiful woman in the town” images had come into play. It was almost like he couldn’t make his mind up about something.

“What is it?” Yuuri asked, voice quiet. His nails were digging into the flesh of his palms now, but it was stopping his hands from shaking, so he ignored the pain.

“You’re full of surprises, Yuuri,” Victor finally said. He used his free hand to unravel one of Yuuri’s, and clutched Yuuri’s fingers in his own. “But this is a surprise I can’t figure out. Why do you pull away from me? It’s not because you don’t like me. Is it something else?”

Yuuri squeezed his eyes shut, and turned his face out of Victor’s grip, away from those imploring blue eyes. Victor dropped his hand, and placed it on top of the hand he already had from Yuuri. He didn’t say anything, but the silence was pressing, and Yuuri was distinctly reminded of the times he’d craved affection when the lights had been turned out.

But this wasn’t that boy. He wasn’t in a cramped room in Detroit. He wasn’t sweating at the palms because he was nervous. He wasn’t the same Yuuri he had been back then. This wasn’t some boy expressing interest in him either, it was Victor. The same Victor who wasn’t afraid to touch Yuuri where others could see, who did so freely.

He wasn’t sure why, but he told Victor everything. It made him shake, and press his free hand to his face because his cheeks were getting wet with something other than steam. He couldn’t stop his shoulders from trembling, or his voice from cracking with fear and self-consciousness. He tried to shrink away as if he could take back the words he was saying, but Victor’s hands around his own were an anchor he couldn’t untie.

“I like you, but I shouldn’t,” he finished, when he felt like he had no more words stored up in his mind to say.

“I want you to like me,” Victor said, after a quiet moment. He drew Yuuri’s hand up out of the water, and pressed Yuuri’s palm flat against his chest as though he wanted Yuuri to feel the pace at which his heart beat. “I want you to look at me the way I look at you. I’m afraid too, Yuuri, can’t you tell?”

Yuuri’s eyes were wide, and bloodshot from crying. He was sure Victor could see his confusion in them, because what did Victor had to be afraid of?

“I’ve always been admired… always had admirers,” he said, as his grip tightened on Yuuri’s hand to prevent him from pulling away, “but they’re faceless people, or people who hide behind cameras. What if I never found someone who looked at me and saw who I saw when I was by myself, at home, without any costumes or makeup to fix the things I don’t like? But I thought… I thought that perhaps you look at me like that, Yuuri. Don’t you?”

He thought he did, he knew he did, but how did he say that? “But I can’t be the person you want,” Yuuri said, because it was the truth, and it hurt.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t become him,” Victor insisted. “Do you think that the person I am now is the type of person you need?”

He didn’t know. He liked Victor for Victor, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think the both of them would remain as they were in that moment forever. Even in the last few months they had changed so much, their relationship had changed so much. It was magnetic; gravitational. Who could say how they would end up?

“See, you understand now, right?” Victor said. “We’ll change for the better, if we only give it a chance. Yuuri, I really like you. Won’t you be mine, for now?”

Yuuri flinched, his breath caught in his throat. It was that fight or flight reaction, except he’d only ever had flight. But then one of Victor’s hand was tracing up his arm, grounding him, curling around his neck to pull him closer. It was strange to have Victor press their foreheads together, and not because they were both naked, but because Yuuri had done it first, hadn’t he? Where had that Yuuri, that honest and raw Yuuri gone?

“Won’t you keep your eyes on me?” Victor whispered.

In that moment, Yuuri felt like he was helplessly falling, but he didn’t stop it. “I already do,” he said, his voice rushed and fevered as his hands fumbled across Victor’s chest, looking for purchase. “I’ve never looked away.”

And Victor got that smile again, that one that softened his face and brightened his cheeks and showed off his teeth. “Yuuri,” he said, the same way someone might gasp out a pleased cry or a shout of victory, but it was only his name. “Yuuri, I really want to kiss you. Can I?”

If Yuuri wasn’t going to stop himself from falling, then he wasn’t going to stop that, either. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t squeeze the words out, but his hurried nodding was more than enough for Victor, who tilted Yuuri’s chin up to claim his lips.

It was like breathing in, Yuuri thought, even though he couldn’t breathe at all. Kissing someone he liked as much as Victor was different from kissing someone who would only ever touch his lips in the dark, like he was ashamed. When Victor hunched his shoulders like he was trying to press in closer and cradled Yuuri’s face like it was made from glass, Yuuri felt dizzyingly prized. He panted when Victor pulled back, wondering how his body had become so hot just from a simple touch to the lips, but he _craved_ more.

“Victor,” he whimpered.

“Shh, Yuuri,” Victor cooed. His fingers traced Yuuri’s face and their knees pressed together at Victor’s shifting insistence. “I’ll touch you all you want, I promise. I’ve waited so long to kiss you, to kiss someone like that… I’ve never had my breath stolen away quite so fast. You’re a treasure I never thought I’d get to hold.” 

Victor’s affections were blinding when he was like this, when he had permission to do things Yuuri would have otherwise rejected. It was like Victor was trying to fit in every single thought he had before Yuuri panicked, before Yuuri shied away from him, and it was a struggle for Yuuri not to do so. An irritating thought insisted it couldn’t be true, but another part of Yuuri, the fiercer part that could lick his lips at Victor insisted that thoughts themselves could be changed and replaced at any moment.

But not in that moment. Yuuri felt like he’d been scrubbed raw, and although it was an enlightening feeling, it was also very frightening. He needed a moment to gather himself, to gather his thoughts, and he almost expected to be pressured for more, but Victor drew away. It was like he’d had his fill just for the moment, or like he could see Yuuri’s boundaries, and he wouldn’t push them.

“Come, we should get out before we catch a cold,” he said. In typical Victor fashion, he stepped out of the hot spring without securing his towel, which made Yuuri’s face flush. Without hesitation Victor offered his hand, and usually Yuuri would reject it, would pretend he hadn’t seen it, because it was a touch he didn’t want to flinch away from (and if he didn’t accept it, then there was no way to flinch from it, was there?).

But that evening he paused. There was warmth on his lips that lingered from Victor’s soothing touch and his heart was racing, but it felt good. Victor wanted to touch him, he always had, and Yuuri was starved of attention – attention he only wanted from Victor. Would it really be alright for someone like him to indulge in that? He wasn’t so sure, and his hands shook as he tried to make up his mind. To take Victor’s hand, or not? To change, or to remain as he was, frightened of something he craved? 

And Victor waited patiently, watched him with that easy, flushed smile and his palm eagerly outstretched. Yuuri could hear the echo of Victor saying his name in his head, just like how it echoed around the ice rink when Victor cheered for him. Yuuri wasn’t trapped, not here, not with Victor.

He took Victor’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://milkteamiku.tumblr.com/)   
>  [my twitter](https://twitter.com/fairydens)


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